Treesearch

Terminology frames reality and affects how people perceive and respond to it. What makes the global climate situation concerning is not simply a change in climate, but the anthropogenic change, in addition to natural climate variations, occurring at a rapid rate relative to the pre-industrial era. However, in general language, “climate change” does not differentiate itself from natural climate variations nor reflect the rate of change. Based on theoretical reasoning, this paper argues that “climate upheaval” frames and communicates the global climate situation more informatively. This is...

In 2001, a northern climatic research house was constructed to demonstrate advanced and novel building techniques, materials, and systems for the Upper Midwest region of the United States. As part of the Advanced Housing Research Center program, the house highlighted energy efficiency, sustainability, water efficiency, and moisture research, specifically moisture movement and accumulation in buildings. The house is a 2,300-ft2, two-story structure located on the grounds of the USDA Forest Service, Forest Products Laboratory (FPL) in Madison, Wisconsin. It is considered a research structure...

Context Characterizing landscape ecological complexity and change requires integrated description of spatial and temporal landscape organization and dynamics, as suggested by the shifting mosaic concept. Remotely sensed land surface phenology allows the detection of even small differences among landscape patches and through time, allowing for the analysis of landscapes as shifting mosaics.Objectives We sought to quantify aspects of the complex landscape behaviors that are implied by spatiotemporal variation in land surface phenology. We adapted an information-theoretic (IT) framework from...

Prescribed burning is a cost-effective method for reducing hazardous fuels in pine- and oak-dominated forests, but smoke emissions contribute to atmospheric pollutant loads, and the potential exists for exceeding federal air quality standards designed to protect human health. Fire behavior during prescribed burns influences above-canopy sensible heat flux and turbulent kinetic energy (TKE) in buoyant plumes, affecting the lofting and dispersion of smoke. A more comprehensive understanding of how enhanced energy fluxes and turbulence are related during the passage of flame fronts could...

Boreal forests form the largest terrestrial biome globally. Climate change is expected to induce large changes in vegetation of high latitude ecosystems, but there is considerable uncertainty about where, when, and how those changes will occur. Such vegetation change produces major feedback to the climate system, including by modifying albedo (reflectivity). Our study used the LANDIS-II forest landscape model to project forest dynamics on four representative landscapes (1 M ha) for 280 years into the future under a range of climate scenarios across a broad latitudinal gradient in Siberia....

Urban parks provide vital social, environmental and health benefits to residents. However, the spatial distribution of parks, and the amenities they provide, may not be equitably distributed within cities. We examine the accessibility of urban parks with different social, environmental and health amenities by race and ethnicity. We identified 122,988 urban parks across the USA, measured the racial/ethnic population distribution within a 10-min walkshed around each park and compared these distributions to the overall demographics of the city. We found that the spatial distribution of parks...

The Forest Vegetation Simulator (FVS) is a forest dynamics modeling system with geographic variants covering forested areas of the contiguous United States. FVS was developed in the early 1980s and is used throughout the United Sates for predicting forest development and the effects of alternative forest management actions. FVS variants are also used in Canada and Europe. The Sixth Forest Vegetation Simulator (FVS) Conference, held March 7-9, 2023, in Fort Collins Colorado, consisted of 29 offered presentations and two invited panel discussions organized into three main topic areas: Model...

Idaho has unique legislation declaring that the state pay for wildfire suppression on state lands and forested private lands. Representatives of the Idaho Department of Lands, the governor’s office, the U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service, and Department of the Interior Bureau of Land Management met repeatedly starting around 2020 to decide who would pay for wildfire suppression. The interagency working group couldn’t agree on how to define “forested land.”

Urban fires that result from wildfires are an emerging, extreme event affecting communities and urban forests globally. However, much of the fire effects on urban ecosystems literature is primarily focused on Wildland-Urban Interface (WUI) areas, correlates of building loss, risk mitigation, and wildland vegetation and fuels. Three recent urban fires in California USA provided an opportunity to explore these effects on urban forests: the 2017 Tubbs (Santa Rosa) and Thomas (Ventura) fires and the 2018 Camp fire that burned Paradise. Accordingly, we analyzed pre- and post-fire neighborhood...